GENERAL RENO: One of the things that you
learn about, if you're a state attorney in Miami
for any length of time or Attorney General during
these years, is that you think that friendship is
one of the most wonderful things that you can
have. And Bob and Lynn's friendship is one of the
things I treasure.

I came to Washington saying that I love
lawyers, that I loved the law, didn't like greedy,
indifferent lawyers, but thought lawyers were
pretty special. In the course of time, I have
developed an even greater respect for trial
lawyers because one of the things that I've
learned is that many decisions are made without
the accountability, the attention to detail, the
commitment to proof and the sense of innovation
that trial lawyers have. People make decisions in
Washington, and in other parts of the country I
discovered, based on discussion. But discussion
doesn't get you to the truth, by trying a case,
particularly trying a criminal case, so I feel
very good about being around trial lawyers today.

I've been there for seven and a half
years. I've had an opportunity to watch some of
the great trial lawyers in action, both before me
and in our courts. After seven and a half years of
watching America's lawyers at work from an
extraordinary vantage point, I am prouder than
ever of being a lawyer in the United States.

You have done so much. I just look
around this room and see people I have such
profound respect for. I've seen what you've done
in your community, a community we love. I've seen
what you contribute to this nation. But I would
ask to you join me and others because I'm speaking
on this issue and will continue to speak on this
issue to address what I think is one of the
greatest problems we face, both in America and
around the world, today with regard to the law.

Too many people don't have access to the
law, and it doesn't mean much more than the paper
it's written on. Last week I spoke about Runny
Meade. I could see the barons coming up the
plain, meeting with King John, and I'm reminded of
Chapter 40: "To no one will we sell. To no one
will we deny or delay right or justice." I think
it's one of the most beautiful lines from the law
that I know. But for too many people in this
country that clause, that chapter means nothing.
The woman who's just getting off welfare who can't
get the landlord to fix the toilet that's been
stopped up again and again and again. The young
man who's charged with a capital case who has a
lawyer that isn't competent to handle a capital
case and no one will provide anything otherwise.

There are so many instances that we see
where Americans do not have access to the law that
is necessary to defend them. And I would like to
suggest that in these next three years lawyers,
both in their associations and in their individual
capacities, come together and once and for all
address the issue of how we make the law real for
all people.

A lot of people do pro bono work. Public
defenders perform valiant service. People do so
much, and I take nothing from what we have done.
But we have got to do it in a far more effective,
far more comprehensive effort that leaves no one
out. We have got to look at what the problem is,
design a solution, and make it last. And I would
suggest to you some points in this initiative.

First of all, let us define jurisdictions
in which we develop a comprehensive plan. In some
instances it may be a state or a county or
municipality. It may be the area or the people
covered by a bar association. But let's define
the entity and develop the comprehensive plan for
that entity. Let us consider the entities that
would be involved. Is it the state Supreme Court
or the state bar or the local bar association? Is
it a municipality? How do we define the structure
and identify the people who will participate and
the person responsible or the institution
responsible for achieving the plan that would
provide comprehensive service.

Then let's inventory the need for legal
services in that particular jurisdiction. Is it
landlord/tenant problems that plague most people?
We can do surveys. Is it a failure of government
to provide municipal services in an equal manner
throughout the community? Is it immigration and
nationalization issues that plague us? What are
the issues for which we need to provide legal
services to make the law real for all Americans?
Then secondly, let us inventory the problems that
are generating the need for legal services, and
let us figure out what to do about that.

Fourth is identify the traditional means
of providing services for those who can't afford
it and let us then figure out what we can do to
enhance our ability to provide such traditional
services. Let us take pro bono services, for
example. In most jurisdictions in this country
lawyers provided, sometimes on an ad hoc basis,
sometimes in a program, but in most instances it
is not provided in a comprehensive way. It's not
provided so as to meet the needs of the community.
Let us figure out how we can make it more
effective by proper supervision, by proper
training, by consideration of ethical issues up
front so that people will feel freer to provide
pro bono services knowing that they have addressed
the issue of competency and addressed the ethical
issues that might confront them and that they can
feel comfortable in doing the work and feeling the
success of the work.

Let us look at legal services, the public
defenders program, court-appointed services, to
see what we can do to enhance them. But then,
ladies and gentlemen, let us say that at least
there's got to be some minimal service and that
the bar of America will come together in
legislative halls, in congress and everywhere we
can go to say that somebody charged with a capital
crime facing the death penalty or life
imprisonment or a serious prison term, will not
have to do that without competent counsel. If we
bring the force of the bar together we ought to be
able to do it.

But competent counsel is one thing. For
these cases involving serious penalties, let's at
least make sure not only that we have competent
counsel, but that we have the forensic tools
available to those lawyers to enable them to
properly represent their client and that we have
investigative capacity available to those lawyers
to enable them to properly look at the facts, dig
at the cases and come up with the truth.

But I suggest to you that the traditional
forums of delivering services to indigent people
or people who cannot afford lawyers is not
adequate. And that it has come time for us to
consider a new means of delivering services. I
call it a community advocate and problem solver.
I see this person as a person who gets a four-year
college degree in community advocacy. That degree
could be a degree specializing in immigration
issues, in landlord/tenant issues, in domestic
violence issues, in whatever issue is a category
or subject matter that reflects the need for legal
services in America.

Now, I made this proposition once to a
group of lawyers, and I got a letter back that
just -- you could see the flames and the smoke.
And this man told me that I was going to be taking
work away from lawyers and I'd better not pursue
the idea. Well, I picked up the phone and called
him and said, "Sir, you don't have to worry about
taking this business from lawyers. They don't
want it anyway." I said I'm talking about
problems that beset people, that bring down their
lives, that weigh them down, that keep them from
functioning as effectively as they can, that
people can address and solve as they do it in a
reasonable way. Somebody who has two good years
of specialty in a four-year college degree about
how to do landlord/tenant work is going to be
better than the average lawyer that I know that
occasionally helps out somebody in trying to get
that landlord to do what he wants to do.

Furthermore, we can do it based on a
variety of certifications or supervision. This
person could be assigned to or work under the
auspices of a law firm. He could assigned to or
work under the auspices of a municipal government
or a private employer who wants to provide
advocacy for his, the people that work for him. Or
it could be a free-standing person subject to
state certification that the bar could participate
in. But it was best explained to me when I told a
lawyer, whom I admire a great deal, I said,
"You're not going to like this, but this is what
I'm proposing." He said, "I would have disagreed
violently with the proposal four years ago until I
went to Africa and saw people operating and saving
eyesight, people who had no, not even a high
school education, but who had learned from
American surgeons who had volunteered their time
and come and teach people who had the ability with
their hands and the basic knowledge, and sight is
being saved that otherwise wouldn't have been
saved. We've got to reach out and give people
some rights that they wouldn't have if we didn't
have this type of a function or a person to
perform the function.

Then I suggest it has come time for
lawyers to really become move involved in problem
solving. What are the problems that are
generating the need to legal services? Part of it
is lack of diversity in the profession and lack of
equal opportunities for the people of this
country. But if we're good at problem solving,
we're going to look at diversity and say, Why do
we wait until law school and until the university
to address the issue of affirmative action? We
should be addressing affirmative action up front
for that child who has just been born into this
world and make sure that they have the health
care, the housing and the supervision they need to
grow into strong, constructive people and take
advantage of the educational opportunities that
can otherwise be afforded to them. If we start
looking at it from that vantage point and solving
the problem before it's generated, we can make a
lot more sense.

Now, some people tell me that trial
lawyers aren't problem solvers, they just
litigate. The best trial lawyers I know can run
rings around anybody in trying a case, but they
know how to resolve the issue in the best
interest, long range of their clients. And most
of the good trial lawyers I know would rather have
avoided the trial for their client in the first
place, avoided the problem in the first place,
than ever go through the trial and see the damage
done for which the trial is simply the
compensation.

I suggest to you that there are two or
three years where we really must focus in terms of
problems that we must address if we are to ensure
access to legal services. This world is becoming
international in so many ways. The word
"globalization" is now a standard reference in our
vocabulary each day. Crime is international in
its origins and its results. When a man can sit
in a kitchen in St. Petersberg, Russia and steal
from a bank in Boston, you understand more than
ever that boundaries are becoming meaningless as
cyber tools erase the concept of boundaries.

It is time for all the lawyers of America
to gain a proficiency in cyber technology
sufficient to apply the Constitution that John
Marshall knew to this day in time, to this
technology and to ensure that those constitutional
protections that we have cherished for all of our
lives as a nation are not diminished because we
let technology control us rather than us control
technology. It is important that we come together
with our colleagues around the world to address
this problem. I have been working with the
Ministers of Justice in the G8, the big industrial
nations, the eight big industrial nations as well
as this past week meeting with representatives of
the European Union. We're going to have to have
new concepts of venue, of how we handle cases, of
how we bring people to justice. We're going to
have to make sure that we extradite based on where
the action took place rather than whether and who
is a national of which country. We have got to
make sure -- and I think this organization can
take the lead amongst others in ensuring that the
rule of law is extended around the world, and that
forums are made available for everyone to resolve
their problems.

It's going to do me no good to get
someone access to justice if they can't get access
to justice halfway around the world against a
person who's tried to con them out of their
savings over the internet. How do we do it? Some
people tell me it seems impossible. I suggest to
you nothing is impossible for lawyers that put
their mind to it and get to the good solutions.

The next issue is we have a chance to end
the culture of violence in this country if we only
put our mind to it. Crime is down now seven years
in a row. People say, "It happened during your
watch." I said, "Yes, but I've been there before
when crime's gone up." If we have done anything, I
think what we have tried to do is address it from
the point of view that crime is not a political
problem in terms of partisan political issues. It
is neither a Democratic nor Republican problem.
It is everyone's problem. And should be
approached not with political rhetoric but with
hard data, people working together using
common-sense approaches that involve both
punishment and prevention and accountability and
opportunity and I think we can make a difference
if we just don't become complacent. I've already
heard people say, Oh, we don't have near as much
crime. I feel much safer. I can go out, and I
don't worry about it anymore. That time of
complacency is going to lead us back to crime
rising again. But if the lawyers of America come
together and work with communities in building a
community fabric that can deal with crime in a
sensible way, assessing the crime in a community,
saying this is what the feds can do; this is what
state and locals can do; this is what the
prevention people can do; this is where we need to
punish; this is what we need to do to give a young
man coming back from prison an opportunity to get
off on the right foot. If we use common sense, we
can bring the culture of violence to an end in
this country. Of course, we will never eliminate
it, but let me give you a reminder. Between 1992
and 1996 compare Chicago and Toronto, two cities
of somewhat equal size, there were 100 gun
homicides in Toronto; there were 3,060 in Chicago.
You don't need to accept violence as a way of
life. And I think the lawyers of America, public
defenders, trial lawyers, transaction lawyers,
prosecutors should come together and make sure
that we never let ourselves just succumb to
partisan politics again in crime efforts. Let's
make sure we do it in the way that make sense.

Now, there are some tools to these
approaches that I think are important, and I don't
think lawyers are being taught some of the tools
that are important in law school. I think law
school teaches people a lot of good case law. I
have often said that the best educational
experience I had was in law school, so I don't
take a thing away from it. But law schools don't
teach people how to put the can-do to a court
order. I've seen too many court orders directed
towards correcting an activity with no one knowing
how the people are going to afford the resources
necessary to properly implement the order. Lawyers
are very good at coming up with a structure, but
they're not very good often times in the
appropriations process and understanding how you
get government to move to properly fund a program
that can make sense.

And that leads me to the second issue.
We need to look at how we have access to laws
being made. Today, you watch congress in action,
you watch state legislatures in action, even
county commissions. Somehow as lawyers we must
remember that we have got to give our clients, all
our clients, not just those that can afford
lobbyists, but all our clients access to the halls
of the legislature, or otherwise we will again be
left out. And we must give all our clients access
to our courts.

Let me give you an example. In 1988 we
were faced with what to do about people charged
with possession of a small amount of cocaine,
first offenders. Nothing was happening to them
because the court calendars were so crowded that
the courts were giving them credit for time served
when speedy trial was about to run. We developed
a drug court, one that provided a case load small
enough and resources sufficient to deal with the
issue before the court. We put these people in
the court with a carrot and stick approach that
said, You can work with us. We can give you
treatment. We can give you job training. We can
get you an education. Or you can face a more
serious punishment every time you come back
testing positive. We struggled. The evaluations
came back indicating that it was working. There
are now over 400 drug courts across the country
that are making a difference.

Ladies and gentlemen, the lawyers of
America have failed their courts. You who try
many of your cases in beautiful courthouses like
this, with distinguished judges who generally have
case loads that are somewhat manageable, have not
failed this court. But there are state and local
courts across this country, particularly juvenile
and criminal courts, that have been absolutely
overwhelmed and so overwhelmed with case load and
with inadequate resources that they can not be
expected to cope with the problems presented to
them because other institutions from the family,
the schools and the neighborhoods have failed at
every step along the way.

I suggest, as we focus on making sure
that those charged with serious crimes have truly
effective assistance of counsel. That we all have
a responsibility to make sure that the courts of
our nation have a case load and a resource
commitment that makes it realistic to expect that
they can change behavior. If we do that, we're
going to save money in the long run. We're going
to make this community a more productive nation.
We're going to get a better return on our dollars.

But finally, I come to one final point.
Lawyers are often described as contentious. Yeah,
I've been up against some really contentious
lawyers, some that I would think were rude, crude
bores, but they're very few and far between, and
far less in number than perhaps in other
professions. I suggest to you there is an
elegance and a grace and a civility in most
lawyers in America. There is a sense of public
spirit and public commitment. But too many of our
young people don't want to become involved. The
institute of politics at Harvard University has
done a recent study that says young people want to
do community service. They want to contribute.
They want to make a difference, but they don't
want to become involved in the political process.
People ask me, Why do you participate? Why do you
put yourself through this, getting cussed at,
fussed at and figuratively beaten around the ears
at every other congressional hearing? Ladies and
gentlemen, no lawyer has ever been given such a
wonderful opportunity to try to use the law the
right way to make America safer, healthier, freer.

There are so many wonderful
opportunities. And yes, public service can be
trying. But I watched the other day as we
rededicated the site where the ABA had honored the
Magna Carta, and you thought about what happened
60 years ago this August over that plain at Runny
Meade. Some very valiant pilots, probably saved
at least a nation and perhaps western
civilization, some very brave Englishmen took some
very small boats from there along the Thames as we
rode by and took them across the channel and
evacuated an entire army which lived to fight
again and win. And then to go to the war room
where the cabinet met during the bombing raids,
and read that 29,000 people died in London of
bombings.

We need to make sure that we can
contribute in public service and to our nation,
not just in times of crisis but always. And if we
think that public service is arduous, all we need
to do is to think of what these people gave in
terms of lives and honor and commitment and
courage.

We're going to have to figure out how
lawyers can become involved in the political
process, not just as paid lobbyists, not just a
people who are trying to do good, but we need the
eloquence and the grace and the civility of
lawyers who know how to contend against each other
but to do so with honor and vigor and respect. We
need that ability in our county commissions, our
city commissions and elected office, and somehow
or another we're going to have to see that lawyers
in America become more involved in actual service
in the political process than ever before.

When I first started there were wonderful
young lawyers participating in the process in
Florida. One by one their firm said they couldn't
do it anymore. Couldn't afford it anymore. If we
don't contribute, we're going to have to work a
lot harder in the end. But the American people
have a strength and a resilience that if we serve
them we can make a difference. I have seen the
people of Oklahoma City overcome a blast from
hell. I've seen communities come together to
develop great new programs. I have seen brave and
courageous people take extraordinary steps on
behalf of their nation. I hope the lawyers of
America, and particularly the trial lawyers with
the virtues that you have, will join with me in
addressing America's issues now in making the law
real for all Americans and in servicing our people
the way I think only lawyers can do.